But in a new report to clients, Lu notes that lifting the policy
may not necessarily solve the country's demographic
problem.

From Lu:

China’s own experiment of two-child policy
Yicheng county of Shanxi province has maintained a two-child
policy since 1985. Yicheng is just a typical rural county in
Shanxi and has a GDP per capita that is about the national
average. All couples in Yicheng are allowed to have two children
if they marry three years later than the minimum age required
nationwide (22 years for men and 20 for women) and wait for about
6 years to have the second child after the first. Despite
its more relaxed regulations, the county’s population growth rate
has been lower than the national average. From 1980 to 2000, the
population in Yicheng only grew 19.7%, compared to 28.4% in
Shanxi and 25.5% nationwide. Yicheng’s imbalance between
boys and girls is also smaller than the national average. In
2000, Yicheng’s male-to-female ratio at birth was 106:100, much
better than national figure of 117:100. Its total fertility rate
(TFR) was only 1.51, much lower than 1.8. The trend appears to be
similar in other cities/counties that have participated in such
experiments with two-child policy, such as Jiuquan in Gansu,
Enshi in Hubei and Chengde in Hebei province. It suggests
that China’s TFR would decline naturally with or without the
one-child policy, but a relaxed policy could help correct China’s
imbalance in sex ratio.